From the Editor

In this issue, we cover the deaths (and lives) of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, and Viktor Frankl. The first two names are household words, the third is that of a Viennese psychologist who survived the Nazi death camps to argue that Man has a drive for meaning in life as rooted as his appetite for food, sex, and so on.

Frankl thought that belief in God was the surest source of such meaning, followed by love, and then by commitment to work. He himself survived in the camps by keeping before his mind the image of his young wife (who, unbeknownst to him, had perished). This persuaded him, he later said, that Freud’s reduction of love to sublimated sexual desire was pernicious nonsense.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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In this issue, we cover the deaths (and lives) of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, and Viktor Frankl. The first two names are household words, the third is that of a Viennese psychologist who survived the Nazi death camps to argue that Man has a drive for meaning in life as rooted as his appetite for food, sex, and so on.

Frankl thought that belief in God was the surest source of such meaning, followed by love, and then by commitment to work. He himself survived in the camps by keeping before his mind the image of his young wife (who, unbeknownst to him, had perished). This persuaded him, he later said, that Freud’s reduction of love to sublimated sexual desire was pernicious nonsense.